This last weekend my dad and I did a campin trip up in north carolina. We stayed at Tumbling Waters campgroung in almond. Had a great time!
Saturday:
The day started out early in the morning. We left around 6:30 a.m. to head to the Tuckaseegee to try our luck at smallmouth. We drug our driftboat over there to do the drift. With this being our first time fishing there I am not sure of the name of the put in/take out. We startted off early with small chartruese poppers which got a few takes. We managed to catch more rock bass than smallmouth with these. After about an hour the topwater bite wore off and we switched to streamers. This ended up being the trick for the day. Right off the bat i caught a beautiful 19" smallie! We kept fishing and caught one here and there. The action by all means was not hot. We ended up the morning with about 15 fish in the boat with 5 or 6 being smallies.
We arrived back to the campground at around 1. I decided to hike up the creek that runs through it in search for wild bows. I had heard guys previous times talk about good fishing upstream. I had my mom drive me to the end of the road where there was a trail to hike. I hiked a little bit and then headed down to the water. My first cast involved a pretty little 4" bow. I continued upstream to a swimmimg hole that i knew of. When i arrived i crouched behind a rock and peeped over to see if there were any local residents around. To my luck there was a beautiful wild bow probably 11" long looking away from me. I casted my parachute adams. I happened to make a great cast (a one in a million chance for me) and it landed perfectly without spooking the fish. This bigger wild bow, as well as 3 other of his friends, raced at my fly. I couldn't believe it! The best thing though was seeing this nice fish rise and inhale my dry fly. I know all of this sounds great (which it was) but i jumped the gun and the fly came right out of his mouth I worked my way up the creek and released a few other small bows (as wekk as more types of chubs than i could count)
Sunday:
I figured that the fishing would be best early in the morning, so i headed up the same stream. The big fish i saw yesterday was nowhere to be seen. I ended up working my way, way upstream. I hit a point where the creek started to climb the mountain. There were great holes all over this section, but no trout. I even walked through a few nice holes to see if i could spook anything out, but nothing spooked. I decided to head back to the campsite with only 2 to hand.
Later in the day my dad and i waded the lower Nantahala on high water. (not as hard as i thought.) It took me a while, but i finally found out they were keyed in on midges. Once i found this out i started catching fish. It seemed that behind any rock that produced slack water there was a fish. I ended up with about 10 to hand in 1.5 hours. I left feeling accomplished
Monday:
I went against what everyone on this forum says and went way downstream on the small stream i had been fishing. Joe, the campground owner, told me that when the water is low the fish go down near where the creek goes intoi the lake. In this section it was much easier casting (was using a 9 foot 5wt) I immediately got into fish. There were a bunch of good holes and runs that all held fish. I could not get one fish to even touch any of the droppers i tried. I ended up clipping off the dropper and went with just a parachute adams. I fished a while and managed around 20 fish. The biggest was 9" and a wild rainbow. This creek is listed as a hatchery supported stream, but i have yet to find a stocker in in.

Overall a very fun trip. I look foreward to going back up at the end of september. Hopefully the creek will be fuller and the water cooler.
Hope you enjoyed

Rainbow Warrior--The small stream you were fishing is Panther Creek. It is a hatchery supported stream, but like a lot of similar streams in southwestern NC, it contains a good population of wild fish. The dough bellies are usually caught out soon after they are stocked, but the stream-reared trout are far less susceptible to kernels of corn and gobs of red worms. Hence your first-rate experience on Panther Creek.
As for the Tuckasegee, if you can provide a bit more detail about where you put in (above or below Bryson City, nearby bridge?, or other landmarks) I can almost certainly give you the name of the place you launched.
Sounds like a great weekend, and kudos for trying the Nantahala with the water "on." I actually much prefer it then, although most locals don't like to wade it.
Jim Casadawww.jimcasadaoutdoors.com

I can give you better information about where we took out. We took out just above a bridge. On the downstream side of the big bridge there were some bigger rapids. The takeout was on some "ramp" that was on a road along a feild that had people working in it. As for the put in all i remember was there was a small asphalt parking lot. There wasn't really a ramp, but it was a set of wooden stairs thatwe pushed the boat down. We want to try drifting the DH section in the winter. Are there good put in/take out places? As for the nantahala. I too liked it when the water was on. It got annoying when rafts would go over the spot i was fishing, but it became apparent that they are used to it. I caught a few right after a groups of rafts went through.

Rainbow Warrior--From what you describe you almost certainly put in just below the mouth of Coopers Creek. Although there's nothing to mark the spot and no reason you would have known, you were within 1oo yards of where Horace Kephart died. The spot on old U. S. 19 used to be known as Dead Man's Curve, thanks to the fact that not only were Kephart and visiting novelist Fiswoode Tarlton killed there; ten years later the tax driver who was driving them back from the bootleggers (and who was drunk, as they were) wrecked and died on the same curve after having visited the same bootlegger.

You took out at Darnell Farms, which is the lower end of what used to be known as the Ferguson Fields. Today most of the large bottom (the largest one anywhere on the Tuckasegee) is owned by the Cherokee tribe. A mile or so from where you took out there's an Indian mound in the field, and they knew the area as Kituwah, the "mother town."

Probably more than you wanted to know, but you were in an area with particularly rich history.

Rainbow Warrior--From what you describe you almost certainly put in just below the mouth of Coopers Creek. Although there's nothing to mark the spot and no reason you would have known, you were within 1oo yards of where Horace Kephart died. The spot on old U. S. 19 used to be known as Dead Man's Curve, thanks to the fact that not only were Kephart and visiting novelist Fiswoode Tarlton killed there; ten years later the tax driver who was driving them back from the bootleggers (and who was drunk, as they were) wrecked and died on the same curve after having visited the same bootlegger.

You took out at Darnell Farms, which is the lower end of what used to be known as the Ferguson Fields. Today most of the large bottom (the largest one anywhere on the Tuckasegee) is owned by the Cherokee tribe. A mile or so from where you took out there's an Indian mound in the field, and they knew the area as Kituwah, the "mother town."

Probably more than you wanted to know, but you were in an area with particularly rich history.